Branding; Are You Headed To Extinction Or Distinction?

Have you looked at where your brand is headed lately?

You may be surprised at some of this year’s top 100 movement up or down. If you believe a brand ranking is the canary in the mine as I do, the year 2009 has some telling signs of where the economy is affecting buyer’s habits. Check out the below selected activity from the top 100 global brands list*.

New brands on the top list in the last two years:

·Polo Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Puma, Adobe, Burger King, Lancôme.

Dropped backward:

·Toyota, Intel, Disney, Mercedes Benz, BMW, American Express, Oracle, UPS, Sony, HSBC, Dell, CITI, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Harley Davidson, GAP, Starbucks, Lexus.

Rising brands this year over last on the top 100 list:

·McDonalds, Google, HP, Gillette, Cisco, Marlboro, Honda, Samsung, Apple, H&M, Pepsi, Nescafe, Nike, SAP, IKEA.

Where is your brand headed in the next five years? What have you done for your buyers lately?


*Interbrand 2009 rankings

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Ecommerce And Interactive Avatar Advertising Inside The Box; Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

First The Basics Of The Interactive Virtual Landscape Inside The “Box”:

•At least one or more Nintendo Wii (younger and family friendly games), XBOX 360, and PS3 (Older, albeit more “mature” rated) game systems are in many homes today.
•Most non gamers (and Parents) are unaware of the virtual worlds that come into your homes when these boxes are hooked up to the internet live.
•Avatars are the alter ego virtual travelers created by the player inside the interactive worlds.
•Interactive product placements, Ecommerce and youth advertising inside these boxes are now a billion dollar industry! Surprise!

Recently, I worked with an advertiser in Manhattan who is heavily involved in a beta project where local advertisers and promotions are triggered and rotated by the location of the Ip address visiting the live games inside Nintendo, Xbox, and PS3. The idea is national ads and product placements show up as the visitor travels through the game or a chat mall. The real trick for him was targeted local ads are triggered (i.e. Joe’s local pizza place) by the IP address or the visitor can punch in a zip code if they are traveling into a temporary city (future business trips into say San Francisco to see where 2 for 1 restaurant coupons are available to print off).

Perhaps this national interactive advertising is not new to any Ecommerce and Interactive experts, but what was new to me was my “Local” AVATAR could go into a name brand store or local (i.e. virtual 3D Radio Shack or locally owned Betty’s clothing store) and make a purchase in 3d with my credit card. This was an incredible customer experience for me as I don’t actually go to malls anymore to buy “stuff”. The experience was a virtual web shopping site in 3d while I was strolling along talking to other Avatars. That week my purchases came to my home on time and in good condition, just like making a website purchase. Also of note, above the buildings in virtual beta town, one could clearly see the graphic ads were targeted to me in the demo, with a few national Nike billboards thrown in for good measure.

Just as a heads up, today’s kids are not out playing street football, or dressing Barbie as much as they used to, but they are very active! We as Ecommerce and Interactive Marketers can curse the generational darkness or we can go into these AVATAR boxes and find our future buyers in their native habitat. This new Interactive advertising world can be a force for good or bad, but it will be a force to be reckoned with in the future. Good luck, the Ecommerce and Interactive Marketing game just changed…………..